Why Should I Invest in Lower-End Value Stocks?

Investing in lower-end value stocks means that an investor is dealing with stocks valued as close to possible to the private market valuation. Buy cheap but quality lower-end value stocks with insight from a personal financial adviser in this free video on stocks and investments.

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Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Roger Groh. Today we're here to talk about value stock investing, and specifically, the lower end of value stock investing. What does that mean? Well, it's really an accounting concept where you're trying to buy a company as close as you can to private market valuations. By looking at book value, for instance, by looking at cash flow. And by looking at break up value. Three broad measures of how to determine value. An example might be, you can actually go and buy a McDonald's restaurant. Or a Burger King, or a Wendy's. I don't mean you're buying the hamburgers, you're buying the whole restaurant. Rough rule of thumb, good thing to pay about one time sales, or maybe eight to ten times their cash flow. On the other hand, if you're like most of us and you really don't want to work twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year with no days off and no holidays, then you'd default to buying the common stock. You'd get about the same amount of growth, but you just have less headache. And you can sit back and let somebody else run it for you. But, for that comfort and for that ease, the common stock sells at a premium, at a higher price, roughly double the price of actually buying a restaurant and having to put in the work and make it happen. That spread between the difference between private market valuation and public market valuation is the difference between value at the low end, and premium at the high end. Now, during normal stock markets, it's about double. But, occasionally, you get periods when stocks sell at less, equal to or less than private market valuation. And at that point, you're dealing with value stocks at the lower end. There are also companies you can buy which, today, sell at cash. In other words, if they liquidated the entire business, paid off all the debt, they could actually give you cash back. That would be another way to define value investing. And there's a wonderful book, written years ago, by two guys, Graham and Dodd, when they were at Columbia, on investing. Among other people, they had a little known employee who worked for no money, who went on to be a better know investor, by the name of Warren Buffet, who is the god of value investing. And, the essence of it is, buy quality and buy it cheap. And buy as close to book value as you humanly can. So, what does it mean to buy at the lower end of book value? That means that you're buying something probably pretty close to break up value or below, and certainly, at or below what a private company would sell for. So, I'm Roger Groh, and that's a little bit about value investing on the lower end.